Adding @booktitle to BibLaTeX reference for @misc reference entries

Question

I'm using Overleaf and trying to use the built-in feature to load references from Mendeley.

However, there is a bug where Web Page's accessed dates do not load into the Bibliography, see here.

In this thread, the workaround by @Aslak Todal is:

One of the fields that are provided is "publications", which is transferred to the .bib file as @booktitle. Since most webpages don't have book titles, this can be exploited by copy-pasting the date accessed into the "publications" field and using BibLaTeX-settings that displays the @booktitle field for @misc entries.

In Mendeley I have included the accessed date in "publications", but I'm not sure how to modify the BibLaTeX settings to display @booktitle for @misc entries.

Please could someone give an example on how I would modify this formatting so that I can properly cite web pages?

Thanks.

Answer 1

biblatex does not use the booktitle field for @misc entries and I don't think it makes sense semantically to force biblatex to do so.

Frankly, I believe that Mendeley should just properly write the URL access date into the urldate field when it exports .bib files for biblatex. A software that claims to be compatible with biblatex should not require extremely unusual workarounds like the one suggested in the quote.

You should definitely complain to the Mendeley people. You may also want to consider using a software that properly supports biblatex in its .bib export feature.

If you must stick with Mendeley and can only bring it to export to the access date to the booktitle field, you can try to remap booktitle to urldate for @misc entries.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear]{biblatex}

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex]{
    \map{
      \pertype{misc}
      \step[fieldsource=booktitle,   fieldtarget=urldate]
    }
  }
}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{elk,
  author    = {Anne Elk},
  title     = {A Theory on Brontosauruses},
  year      = {1972},
  url       = {https://example.edu/~elk/bronto.pdf},
  booktitle = {2021-01-07},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
Lorem \autocite{elk}

\printbibliography
\end{document}